Looking for ways to simplify software support, reduce support costs and improve your ability to resolve software problems in-house quickly? If so, we invite you to explore the newest features in IBM Support Assistant 3.0.2.
The IBM Support Assistant (ISA) is a free local software serviceability workbench that helps you resolve questions and problems with IBM software products. It provides quick access to support-related information along with serviceability tools for problem determination.
New release! ISA V3.0.2 is now available and includes major performance enhancements with the Updater. Getting new product features and tools is now faster than ever!
Get Started! Cross brand solution in one place.
ISA uses the Eclipse technology to allow all IBM Software brands to add
in necessary contents for their specific products. Once you've installed
ISA, look for the IBM product that you are working with via the ISA Update
function. Get started! A quick demo on how to use the updator is available on this CD.
Looking for information ? Get it all in one place.
How often do you find yourself not being able to find that essential piece
of information about an IBM product? ISA can help!
- Search across all IBM documentations. With IBM Support Assistant, you will be able to get to the information
you need quickly. ISA provides a quick access through its concurrent Search
tool that spans across the bulk of IBM documentation and returns the results
categorized by source for easy review. A demo of ISA's search is available on this CD.
- Key product Information: In addition to the Search, ISA provides a product information feature
that has key product information links that are essential to self-help.
A demo this feature is available on this CD.
Can't solve your problem ? Want it answered faster ?
Looking for ways to solve your problem faster? Self-help or otherwise,
ISA can help with the time to problem resolution and managing your PMRs!
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Free diagnostic tools! Included in ISA is a new Tool workbench that provides you with the problem determination tools that IBM Support uses to resolve issues. Ongoing, different product teams will make more and more tools available for ISA's tools framework in order to enable you to perform problem determination on your desktop.
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Collect data that support needs! The Service feature included data collectors that provides the unique
ability to collect specific information relating to a particular problem
that you are having. Simply attatch this file with your PMR report and
submit! A demo of ISA's data collection capabilities is available on this CD. A demo on how to use data collector independent of ISA may also be found on this CD.
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Open and manage your PMRs: Another aspect of the Service feature is the problem submission tool. This allows you to enter your entitlement information once and have it saved for future sessions. You can then easily create a problem report for IBM and attach the collector file at the same time. Simple to do and yet extremely helpful for expediting a solution back from IBM. A demo of this PMR management feature is available on this CD.
What's new for version 3.0?
The IBM Support Assistant v3.0 is a significant release and contains several significant improvements. Here are some:
- More product plug-ins with all five IBM Software brands represented.
- Improved symptom based data collection.
- More product information skills and roadmap links.
- New pluggable tools framework.
- New update manager to easily update and install ISA plug-ins and tools.
- Re-designed user interface for more intuitive user experience.
The IBM Support Assistant V3.0.1 is an update to v3.0 with improved updater, SOCKS proxy support, and contains
a built-in installer. IBM Support Assistant V3.0.2 includes major performance enhancements with the updater.
Platforms Supported?
AIX V5L, HP-UX 11.x, Red Hat Linux, Solaris (Sun Microsystems), Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP
How may I install the IBM Support Assistant?
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Certain IBM Rational products' installation media contain the IBM Support
Assistant install files.
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Or it may be downloaded from the IBM Support Assistant site, which contains links to the actual download files and links to IBM Support Assistant documentation and training.
Summary
The IBM Support Assistant is part of a IBM Software Group cross-brand (Information
Management, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli, WebSphere) initiative to improve customer
self-help and to make it easier to find information about IBM products.
Additionally, this initiative will prevent problems from occurring and,
if a problem occurs, lower the time-to-resolution of that problem.
Send comments to ibmsa@us.ibm.com
For the latest versions and additional information on the IBM Support Assistant tool, visit the official IBM Support Assistant website on IBM.com.